speling & nomenklaychur

[Will Owen <nashwill@domain.elided>]

Well...

Improper spelling and grammar grate om me almost as
badly, I suspect, as they do on Fred; I was raised
under the pervasive influence of my grandmother, a
high-school (and old-school) English teacher. A firm
believer in the proposition that dictionaries should
be sternly prescriptive, she gave up on Webster's
Collegiate when it sanctioned "artic" and "Febyouary"
as acceptable pronunciations for "arctic" and
"February," and made sure none of us was allowed out
of the house until we'd gotten "lie" and "lay"
straight. At the same time, we were living in a part
of the world where we might hear a classmate tell how
Pa poured coal oral in the stove and ketched the
chimbley on far, so we became adept at carrying our
learning lightly...

Of course those round things you put tires on are
WHEELS, and RIMS are simply the peripheral portion.
It's also true that the rotating part of a disk brake
is not really a ROTOR, but a DISK...but when did you
ever see a brake shop advertising "Disks Turned"? Or
see an ad for drilled/ventilated disks? Similarly, in
the world of commerce, although custom or alloy WHEELS
are commonly referred to by that name, the word RIM
keeps popping up in connection with their actual
function, especially in discussions about tires:
"Tires Mounted and Balanced On Rims" (and I've seen
"Rims Balanced"). "You want them snow tars on your old
rims, I guess," or even, "If you buy a set of alloy
wheels, we'll give you a rebate for your steel rims."
Even a municipal regulation in Nashville states that
one of the permitted items in a special household
trash pickup is "up to four tires off rims." And, as
Fred pointed out, it's been a long time since rims
could typically be demounted from the rest of the
wheel, and so the whole thing gets called a "rim."
Howcum? Hoonose...

As for spelling, the hell with it. I'm used to being
the only one I know who can spell, anyway, and the
ever-encroaching effect of spell-checking software
(which will approve "pale" for "pail," and "there" for
"their" for "they're") is just making matters worse
and worse...and not worth risking a coronary event
over.

Will Owen
Pasadena, CA
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